Predictions For Colorado Could Help Clinton

With revelations about both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton coming out in the days before voting, there has been concern all around about what will happen on Election Day. Will the polling margins shrink? Could Trump pull ahead? Have the polls been wrong all along? The Trump camp is hoping the answer is yes to all of the above. While worrisome nationwide, they are of course compounded in states like Colorado, which is traditionally a battleground state. That's why the ease of making predictions for Colorado on Election Day is so surprising.

This year, the state's polling has been largely been showing Clinton ahead, and no, there's a reason to think she will weather the storm of FBI Director James Comey's letter to Congress, saying additional emails would be reviewed in the probe regarding her private server. And the reason is early voting. Colorado is one of the states that not only offers early voting but actually mails a ballot to each voter. That means a lot of voters have already sent them in or delivered them to a designated drop-off. As of Monday, Oct. 31, that meant that some 860,000 Coloradans had voted already — a big number in a state that had about 3.3 million registered.

Of those mailed ballots, there's a higher number from Democrats. They have about a 30,000 vote advantage over Republicans as things stand now. And that is a big deal considering that until recently Republican registrations outnumbered Democrats in the state.

Going into this general election, Democrats had a slight edge for the first time in 32 years, the Denver Post reported. It's small, about 6,000 votes, and independents are still the vast majority, but that coupled with the early voting margin, and that's all very good news for Clinton's team.

That is seconded by FiveThirtyEight's predictions, too. Nate Silver's team has given Clinton nearly a 73.5 percent chance of winning the state as of Nov. 4. That has eroded from a high of 90 percent on Oct. 17, but it's still good.

So while there might be some chance — 26.5 percent according to Silver's team — that the state goes for Republicans, it's surprisingly easy to say that it should be in Clinton's column. Other swing states like Ohio and Iowa have been more of a toss-up, but Colorado not so much.